If TiVo Thinks You Are Gay,
Here's How to Set It Straight

What You Buy Affects Recommendations
On Amazon.com, Too; Why the Cartoons?

By
Jeffrey ZaslowStaff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated Nov. 26, 2002 6:04 pm ET

Basil Iwanyk is not a neo-Nazi. Lukas Karlsson isn't a shadowy stalker. David S. Cohen is not Korean.

But all of them live with a machine that seems intent on giving them such labels. It's their TiVo, the digital videorecorder that records some programs it just assumes its owner will like, based on shows the viewer has chosen to record. A phone call the machine makes to TiVo, Inc., in San Jose, Calif., once a day provides key information. As these men learned, when TiVo thinks it has you pegged, there's just one way to change...